On Wednesday night, I came home from work and read through tribute after tribute that friends of mine posted online about September 11th. I didn’t live in New York at the time, but much of my network did, and their words moved me as they reflected on their own memories from that horrific day. There were common threads: everyone knew someone who died or was connected to someone who died. Many tried to give blood. They couldn’t reach their families because the phone lines were down. They had to walk home, or sleep on someone’s couch, because the subways were inoperative. They all shed tears trying to comprehend the new world they were living in.
I can’t believe it’s been 18 years.
As I read these reflections, I wondered, what does it mean to translate history that you experienced to others? Especially as we live in a time when many young adults have no recollection of the day (or were born afterwards), how do we transmit the impact? The emotional intensity can only be captured to a certain extent. The magnitude of what New York felt like on that day can’t fully be conveyed in words. I realized the power in these tributes was in the emotional quality from the writer and the depth of personal experience expressed. I kept reading more and more of these posts because it wasn’t like a textbook write-up of an event that happened in history where once you’ve got the information you have a full picture of what transpired. I kept reading these posts because each person conveyed another emotional layer, their own human story of pain, helplessness, panic, grief. Each person’s story was a full story in and of itself.
It’s been 18 years since that day. Chai. Life.
I also read about the goodness that brought people together. The prayer vigils and the hugs of strangers on the streets and the meals brought to the fire stations - all amidst fountains of tears. It was life that people embraced on that horrible day. And 18 years later, it’s life that we cling to. With every year that goes by, we become a bit more removed from what happened. But these personal testimonies translating history help me remember.
It’s hard to find where life has situated inself on this day. The last lines of a poem by Jean Valentine reads, “Yes I know: the thread you have to keep finding, over again, to follow it back to life; I know. Impossible, sometimes."
We have to continue to tell those stories because it is in the personal accounts that we find life, however hard it is to access. It’s in the context of a day of unbelievable tragedy that the smallest, most seemingly insignificant details teach us what it means to live.
May we continue to tell these stories, may we continue to find those threads, following them back to life.
